Riadh Ghemmour

Before I speak about decolonization in a general sense, I'd like to share a personal story here. So I grew up in Algeria, I consider myself as an indigenous Kabyle. I was born in Algeria, and I studied in Algeria. And I always thought that Western norms are universal. And it's something that you need to fit in, and to be part of this world. But obviously, this is the result and the implications of the consequences of colonization, be it direct or indirect. And here I speak about decolonization of the mind. So my mind has been colonized. However, when I came to the UK back in 2017, I started my MSc in educational research, and then later on, I started my PhD, and I came across this concept of decolonization, which was mind blowing through the book of Linda Tuhiwai Smith titled Decolonizing Methodologies. And she speaks about the indigenous struggle. And I related to that, I related to that, but nobody spoke about decolonization or indigenous struggle during my school years or university years, or even in my MSc. So for me, it was mind blowing. And it was a revolution and a process of decolonizing the mind. And it's been very empowering. And it was a process of learning as well, a lot of things that I've taken for granted, especially when it comes to seeing this world from a purely Western Eurocentric perspective. So decolonization for me is a lifelong process that is filled with a lot of tensions, complexities and messiness, and I think it's absolutely fine because we are complex human beings, and we embody different aspects in terms of identity, racialized identity, sexuality, gender, and so on. And I think decolonization is a process of disrupting the Eurocentric lens and decentring, the Eurocentric lens to make space for other voices and historically, marginalized perspectives to shape the world we live in today. decolonization can offer plenty of opportunities, personally, decolonization gave me the opportunity to reconnect with my indigenous identity in terms of language, culture, land, and so on. But also it helps us to unpack systems of oppression, but also how this knowledge that we understand and teach and learn and try to unpack comes from. So this is very important because decolonization expands this knowledge, and considers other ways of knowing and being. And at the same time, decolonization can be a process of healing and reclaiming for specially those who has been historically marginalized.